Today, I loved you

Today, I had a bath. It doesn't happen usually during winters that I bathe because I want to. I wanted to have a bath. I put on fresh clothes, and not the t-shirt I'd been wearing for two weeks straight, because I didn't want to dress-up and be tidy. I had been doing that because I didn't have you to dress-up for. I didn't have you to see my combed hair, which usually spills over the corners of my forehead, fresh clothes straight out of the washing machine - un-ironed though - men's cream on my face, and my smile. I did all of this today. I dressed up for you. Because, today, I was in a mood to love you - notwithstanding the history, or shall I say, because of the history.

I have warm water at my disposal now, quite unlike Delhi where we had to use the stove and still not get the requisite quantity. So I can afford long showers. Have you noticed that immediately after getting a hot-water bath when you walk out of the bathroom or while having your shower when you pause to apply soap, you feel cold? That's the body adjusting to the temperature around you. So you hurry up and apply soap as quickly as you can - don't know how women do it - or dress up immediately after walking out of the bathroom. 

That brief moment of unwelcome coldness, which makes you numb - quite surprisingly - is what we had this year. That is what happened to us. After years of warmth and love, we - or rather, I - goofed up and submitted to the cold without looking at the clothes you'd kept ready on the bed for me to be warm again.

As the year, a turbulent one for me, draws to a close, I recall, for some reason, this caption that you'd put up alongside a picture, which you had updated immediately after my departure from your college.

"Winters are cosy until I'm warm."

This isn't exactly what you'd written - pardon me for my fading memory - but I remember exactly how you were smiling at the camera - a blue pullover complementing how sedative the smile was and your teeth complementing your moles. Your teeth always complement your moles. 

A friend had commented, "Seedhi-saadhi Gorakhpuriya." 

That is who you are: a seedhi-saadhi Gorakhpuriya. Pardon me for making you anything but. Pardon yourself for turning into something else, if you have. 

So I bathed, put on two pullovers, and basked in the Sun. I sat on the bench - do you remember the bench? I strolled around and chatted with an autowallah. He was worried if I had taken the picture of the number plate on his vehicle in order to report to the police. I assured him that I had no such intention. I got a dejavu - you had no such intention either, didn't you?

This year, we've fought more and talked less than ever before. This year would hold the record for the fewest number of conversations that we've had. Also for the distance we've travelled away from each other. And yet, because of the history and not despite it, I write this letter to tell you: My dear, I have loved you and I'll always do, just like I have since I have known you. I have forgiven you and would keep forgiving you, just like I had been doing. 

While taking a stroll around my locality, I was overcome with just how much we'd once meant to each other. To cite an example, I remember that you had called me sometime in September 2014. You were sick, and your mom was there with you. You called me and cribbed. You were complaining that she'd been making you uncomfortable. I was sitting outside Saket Metro Station - Saidulajab side - with my roommate. I had told you that it's okay to have differences with your parents. I'd told you that they are the only ones who'd love you because of the differences as well as despite them. We talked, and I tried to calm you down. 

A few days later, I met you at Noida City Centre and you greeted me with a swollen face and a scarf tied around your neck as if to strangulate you. I wanted to hug you there, immediately upon my arrival - out of pure, unadulterated love - but the exit gate got in between. Also, I was shy. We sat outside the GIP and talked, I brought you biryani - to your delight - and by the time I saw you off, I was convinced that I had made your day. Your happiness at the sheer number of edibles you had at your disposal that night confirmed that the day which had a begun with a phone call over which you'd cried, "Kislaya, milo yar. Mere paas kuch nahi hai," and ended with another phone call, "Mere paas, biryani hai, cold drink hai, fruits hain..." had been a token of the love I had for you.

The months May to October 2014 defined the kind of love I had for you. It was the first time that we were in the same city, and I couldn't help being ecstatic - not because we were meeting or going out every day, but because you were there, so close that I could hop onto a metro and reach you. I had always longed for closeness when we were in college, and I finally had it. 

That's how I felt today. I felt that I still have unconditional love to bestow upon you. Last night, I had this weird fantasy that made me feel how I had felt while looking at the aforementioned picture on THAT birthday. I want to plan one more birthday for you. Last night, when this thought crossed my mind, I was magically empowered to bury all the pain in some corner of my heart and think about just that - planning your birthday. 

"Mere birthday pe humse zyada khush to tum rehte ho," you'd said. It holds true to this day. I cannot describe why it happens - maybe because I travelled to you only to stay for a few hours, which was an act of love I couldn't make out then. Today, I felt as if there'd be no repercussions even if you go away with someone else. It felt as if I was born to love you, and not ask for it in return. Today, my love went one step closer to unconditionality. 

So after returning from the mini-stroll, as I sat on the bench, again, and watched the Sun set, I couldn't help but recall your face resting on the support pole in the metro. All eight of us were returning to the campus, and you, in an act of complete nonchalance, closed your eyes and leaned against the cold metallic body. There were so many shoulders around but you chose the pole. Maybe because you'd always been independent. 

Your black sweater gently hugging your breasts, my yellow sweater which you had cradled between your arms, that strand of hair, which always rests on your forehead, your blue shoes and your closed eyes - illuminated by the setting Sun - made me believe with absolute conviction that I was in love. I knew then that she is the woman I'll always love, with all of my heart. Today, at this moment, as I write this, I can say that I love you with all of my heart. 

As the train moved cities, I likened it to the long journey that lay ahead for us wherein we'll move cities, grow up and apart - as we did - only to come back to each other. You were my home. You are my home. You'll always be.

"I am lucky to have you. Don't ever ask why I sent this." 

I would not ask you why you'd sent this. I'll just rest in piece tonight knowing that it still holds true.

I must post this now before I walk out of the bathroom, fail to bear the cold, and pollute this letter with my desires.

You are living him, and I'm living you.

People have been advising me to stop writing to you. The reason that they present for this befuddles me. They say that you should make the woman wait for you, that you should make the woman miss you. They say that women are drawn towards men who make them wait, and that they outright reject the ones 'who wag their tails behind them.' Well, that was the phrase used, in Hindi of course, by the last person who gave me the advice.

I laugh at those people. Some of these advices have come from women themselves. Which means that they know that this happens, they know that it hurts the other person, and yet they are willing to do nothing about it. They say these things with a sense of vindication and pride on their faces, as if to tell men that the more you're into me, the more you're going to get ignored.

Unless, of course, I'm in love with you. Then, it is a different ball game. But not so different, isn't it? After all, this is what he did to you. He made you wait. He made you wait for months, gave you excruciating pain, and yet, here you are, writing your Instagram bio in his template and using his locations in your stories. If you tell me that 'Berlin' came up out of the blue when you sat down to write that, I won't believe you.

Now, before you go bonkers again, and as I've already grown tired of telling you, this is not written to belittle you. Rather, I'm writing this to appreciate your courage and bravery. Also, in the same breath, let me tell you that as much as I hate him from the core of my heart, I can't judge him. You say he never said a word that hurt you. That already makes him the better man, after all the spears that I've thrown your way, however painful that might have been for me, as I had to rip open my heart every time that I hurled them at you.

You had told me about the time he arranged a bandage when you experienced a muscle sprain in your leg, tied it around your feet and made sure that you're comfortable. I saw the look in your eyes when you'd told me that. Your eyes spoke of how much you wanted it to happen again. They spoke of how ready you were to hurt yourself only so that he could touch you.

Like the way he would have touched you that night. You told me about how you two talked about the world and its stories after it was done, but you didn't tell me about how he travelled your world and drew stories on your bare body using his bare hands and bludgeoning lips. You didn't tell me how you shared the moles on your tongue, the ones you had hidden from the world, with his, and how you got the life-altering serum in his saliva.

You must tell me about the way he held your breasts and switched them between his hands and his mouth. For I've been there too. I've heard your moans in their most subtle form. You must tell me how you cried, almost helplessly, when he slithered under your sheets, buried his face in your neckline and crushed your breasts with his. It destroys me to the core to think of that night. It destroys me even more to think that maybe our night was a recollection of the past, or worse, a dress rehearsal for the future.

But you know what? I'm okay with it. I'm okay with having the second-hand experiences of your famished youth. As long as I can be of any help, of some comfort, I'll be ready to play second fiddle. It hurts to see how a few beautiful months spent with a relatively strange man can overpower the years of warmth that we had, and make him the centre of your life, or to put it bluntly, your bae.

But that's what love is, isn't it? It blindfolds you first, and then, depending on how flabbergasted your heart is, it either gives you a mirage or a miracle.

I'm happy to be your mirage, if that is what it takes for you to reach your miracle. I'm happy to be the guy who couldn't make you feel anything, if that makes you love him with all the heart you have left. Or maybe, love me back with some of it.

You are living him, and I'm living you.

Photo courtesy: Berlin Artparasites

Remember me in parts

I have a constant picture stuck in my head. It's of you, but just your face and a blue dupatta matching your white kurta. I might have picked that up from one of your pictures. And I find ancient architecture in the background. The pale yellow walls of a fort, with dilapidated paint and scrapings peeling out of them. I see the Sun in the background, its rays shining against one-half of your face, thereby darkening the other half.

You look towards the sky and smile. You don't look at me. I'm not sure whether you know that I'm there. You smile, I look at you, and I smile back. Of all the places and forts that you have been to, I remember this picture vividly. Maybe because you took me along with you. It's not just me who takes you to places, you do that too.

So you can wander all you want, to all the places you wish to, I'll always be there smiling at you. I get this dream repeatedly, even when I'm wide awake. Someday it will turn into reality. It might not be in the way I've always expected it to be, but someday I'll live to live this dream.

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You wake me up from the slumber. I look at you and recall that you'd slept with your bra unhooked. Your breasts would have felt free. I was looking for the signs of guilt on your face in the morning. But there were none.

I'd asked you the previous night whether you'd go home or not. To which, you'd replied that you have no home. I wanted to kiss you right there when you said that, but more than that, I wanted to take you home. You got up in the morning, left the bed, stood up facing me, and hooked it back under your kurta. A small piece of your belly, perhaps that spot where my lips had made you moan the loudest, was visible for a few seconds. It reminded me of the few seconds that I had with you. Few seconds, out of the whole dark night.

You washed up and sat against the mirror, I appeared with a bottle of water and placed my lips on your left cheek, despite having the fear that you'd push me away. For the night was over. For it was way beyond 9 AM. But you didn't. It was then, that I felt I had loaned you a home, albeit only for a night.

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You ask me to remember you in parts. A whole is the sum of its parts. You are my whole and my parts. Yes, I can only remember you in parts.

The part where the lip gloss barely hid the chapping lips. The part where the scars on your face overshadowed the moles I'd drooled over. The part where your rebirth looked more beautiful than your scarred body. Also, the part where I fell in love with all these parts more than I'd ever loved the whole of you.

But, it wasn't enough to make you feel what he had made you feel on that night. I realized that there was still a part missing. A part I can neither seek nor produce. That can only be given to me by you. A part of you.

Picture courtesy: Berlin ArtParasites

ले देख तमाशा!

सुन रे सुन बेलिया
दिल ने धोखा दिया 
आँखें मिली तुमसे नाज़नी 
मेरे होश-ओ-हवास खो गए 

Have you ever felt that your heart cheats on you? Have you known that your heart is fickle? Are you aware that you've never really loved someone truly? What do you do when you know? Do you stop loving? 

You don't.

You search for faces. You search for faces to confide in. You search because you want to hide from the world the frailties that are a part of your being. You want to acquire power; power over someone else's being, their face, their pain, and their flesh. 

So you make a decision. You decide to fall. You fall from your own self-built castle of impunity and land into a pit you call love. Love, for all those who have felt it, is nothing more than an intoxication. It's just that the meaning of intoxication is subjective.

दिल ने रो रो कहा

ये आँखें हैं दिल की ज़ुबान

ख्वाब रोज़ रोज़ देखे नए।

You fall from impunity and land on a minefield. You look skywards towards the castle. You look towards the doors you'd barged through and you look at the mess that remains. 

And then, you look at yourself. You know that the mess up there is repairable. The mess down here- in your gut - isn't. You know  that there's no stairway to take you back there. And there's no highway down here either.

So you dream. You dream to find a grain of wheat to separate from the chaff. You dream of finding a silver lining, knowing very well that there's no cloud to find it in. But you dream, because you are a prisoner of your heart.

हो दिल का भंवर बोले सुन साथिया
छुप ना दुपट्टे में तू ओ छलिया 
प्रेम पुजारी के 
दिल का बयां 
होता रहा, 
रोता रहा प्रिये...

There are rules of the prison, though. Prisoners aren't allowed to die in peace. Death is a tricky taker. It takes those who love life the most. Death was cheated by its heart too. But for someone who walks down a minefield, life is only that valuable. So you tread. 

You get hurt, you get bombed, but you tread. You tread until your feet hurt and then tread some more. You meet other travellers. You crib to them about how you were tricked. You cry holding one of them hoping that they'd send you back. But they don't. Because they cannot. 

And that's how the world's been turning. We've all fallen into the pit we never knew existed. And we're too scared to end it all. So we walk. We walk down the boulevard, not just of broken dreams, but of broken hearts; or should I say, broken beings, tricked by the heart. 

In the midst of the chaos, you find stories similar to yours. You find scars and wounds that match the ones on your body. Once you find them, you hold on to them. You hold on to them until you realize that even they can't send you back. So you let go, and search for another one or two. You search for another face. You search for another story.

The heart tricks you again. But you couldn't care less. Because you know that all of life is a Tamasha, and we're here to build our stories. Only so that we can tell them.

The Bench

The bench lies empty now. It was occupied once, for a brief moment, though. That brief moment was an eternity. That brief moment was the last time I'd held her hand, with the facade that I had put on to hide what lay within, but without her knowing it.

Winter hadn't arrived yet. It was autumn slowly submitting itself to the coldness that lay ahead. Leaves were scattered helter-skelter and the rest were dripping down like incandescent rain pelting down on rough stones.

Dark brown ones- the leaves- dark, perhaps because they'd burnt for so long, and were just waiting to let go. A few of them fell at our feet, and I chose not to tread on them. For a few had also occupied the bench before we reached there, and I'd seen how mercilessly she'd used her purple scarf to nonchalantly brush them away.

I was scared of this gesture, for I knew, that very soon, I would let go too. I would let go of the mask that I couldn't fathom when I'd put on. A mask that would give me away, a mask that would be the folly to the bond I had built over seasons- over Novembers, over years.

I knew that I'd fall down too when that happens, like the leaf- burnt, consumed, wasted. Except that I was human; except that I would live on, I'd have to live on.

The evening was breezy, perfect for the hair she hardly bothered trying. She'd loved to be free, just like they were- kissing the wind as it passed by, but never holding on to it.

She'd dressed up too, and I chose to believe that it was for me. I smiled at her as she appeared from the gate. She smiled back, her lips glittering with something I couldn't immediately comprehend. I wanted to tease her, but the chivalry didn't come. I'd had enough of it.

The lips were smiling, the eyes weren't, as she landed on the bench with a gentle thud, too gentle to be noticed, too heavy to be ignored. She'd been weathering a storm herself, without having the slightest of ideas that another one was coming.

Our hands and our bodies were at whiskers, but they just had to be there, like they had been, forever. Except that I wanted to bridge the gap, wanted to mingle into those gaps and dissolve them.

I couldn't. So I chose to look at her, like I had done on each of the few evenings that I had the fate to spend with her. The golden locket adorning her neck stood out against her skin, and lunged into her neckline before disappearing into her bosom.

She wasn't breathing well. I could make that out from the way she looked into nothingness. I wanted to do something about it, like I always had, but couldn't.

The hourglass was only getting empty, and I tried to blabber and murmur- as much as I could, like I always had, with the woman being my witness- before my words dry up, and silence engulfs.

A child drew her attention, and her broadened lips drew mine. But they closed, soon. For some reason, I'd found the closed ones sexier. They were like those thick broad petals of bougainvillea, except a little less pink.

But now I wanted to kiss them, like I'd wanted to kiss on her moles, her neck, and everywhere else. I did all of it, albeit with a touch, when I placed my palm over hers- only for a second- to feel the coldness she couldn't express.

The bench had gone warm, perhaps the warmest it had felt for a long long time, and I, for those brief moments of eternity, felt the same.

The warmth, the heat, the fire, was brimming out, and I knew that I couldn't hold on for long. So I asked her to get up, and we left.

The heat soon withered, and the bench was left cold. Autumn resisted vehemently, but winter, my heart had realised by then, is an inevitability.

  

"Severus, please?"

"Severus..." mumbled a pensive Dumbledore, his eyes transfixed on the bravest sepoy he'd raised, as Draco Malfoy and Bellatrix Lestrange looked on.

Severus didn't move. He didn't even blink an eye. He just watched and watched the old man, under whose commands, he'd lived much of his life for the past seventeen years.

"Please," the headmaster sounded more helpless this time, like the autumn leaf about to get detached from the tree it had survived on, ready to hit the ground, ready to let go.

Severus stared for a second more, perhaps to bait his heart into the delusion of sanity, to pip his tears with remorse, his love with hatred.

The last he'd cried was seventeen years back, holding a dead woman in his arms, with her baby wailing at a loss it couldn't even comprehend.

A sepoy isn't supposed to have any feelings, and he'd fooled everyone except a beating piece of flesh that had survived on a Patronus more than blood.

"Avada Kedavra!"

He didn't take a second longer to flash his wand than he'd taken to rip apart his conscience, and the bravest man Hogwarts ever had was now a Death Eater.

Death had failed to surprise him any longer, for he'd seen many. It was his life that did.

For seventeen years he had lived for a reason he couldn't quite understand. He was the man who died every day for the boy who lived.

The day he died for the umpteenth time, albeit never to rise again, it was the boy who looked on, not wailing this time, but yet again unable to comprehend the loss he was staring at.

Severus cried for the first time in seventeen years, but it wasn't for death. It was for a pair of eyes he was leaving behind.

The eyes he couldn't look into and protect any longer. The eyes he'd already lost once, and would do anything to save that from recurring. 

The eyes of a Lily.

Like in his life, he was cheated in his death too. Why did he live on then? Why did he wait for so long?

It was to answer a rhetoric he was asked every day, "Severus, please?"

This is a tribute to the departed soul of Alan Rickman, who portrayed the role of Professor Severus Snape in the Harry Potter series.
It is a character I hold very dear and seek closure from.

Rest in peace, Severus. You'd live on, in here. 

Always!

I lost my heart in Connaught Place

I lost my heart in Connaught Place
It lost itself in the din
It swirled around through my broody face
And got hungover at N-81.

At every nook, at every alley,
It saw a silhouette recede,
It fluttered over helter-skelter,
Only to confirm its imagery.

The pillars- all white
The roads- all dark
The skies spilled Goldust
And the silhouette was lost.

It looked beyond the faces,
It looked beyond the walls
It looked inside the coffee shop
But the silhouette was lost.

It searched the subway
Hoards of souls
Looked for the taller ones
But found it no more.

The onlookers gazed
With contempt and dismay
My poor heart though resembled the dog
Who just refused to sway.

Long strands of hair were everywhere
But the smell was not to be found
The nectar it had drunk first
In the summer of 2009.

Strands gave way to scarfs
Purple ones with white stars
Necks were scanned, so were backs
But none as colossal were found.

Moles on the faces were plenty
Twins though were scanty
Hardly did it ever miss
Didn't find the ones it'd longed to kiss.

My heart was frantic
Tired and erratic
For it had swept the circus
Through summers and winters.

Through autumns and springs
Through souls- living and dead
Through concrete- erect and broken
Through local markets
Through confectionery stalls

Through the earth and the heavens
It searched and searched
To have glimpse of the hurricane
It had seen before it breathed last.

On a fidgety winter morning
My heart was like a phoenix
It burnt itself through the day
But didn't rise ever since.

Its ghost runs through the realms
Hidden behind my broody face
It was a cold November evening
When I lost my heart in Connaught Place.

Photo courtesy- shades-n-hues

The Quiet Man

I want to be the quiet man
The quiet man,
Behind the extraordinary lady that you are
I want to be that quiet man.

I want to lay back and watch
As you wreck havoc
By the mere stroke of your pen
Or a blazing thought.
Through which you wreck havoc,
The much needed one,
To break the monotiny
To give us something to feed on.

And as you get tired,
And need someone to fall back on,
I want to be there to hold on,
Silently watching,
Like the quietness of the dawn.
I want to be that quiet man.

You and I,
We're so different,
You're a raging hurricane,
Ready to take the world on,
And I'm a pensive observer,
Trying to decipher the world,
Sitting in a lawn.

But there is a lull before every storm,
During which it gathers strength,
I want to be that lull,
I want to be that quiet man.

You'd go to places,
For travelling fills your soul,
Enriches your eyes,
Mystifies your soul.
I want to follow you- quietly,
Without a word,
And watch you utter magic,
Through your eyes
And when they look for another pair- to share
I want to be there.
I want to be that quiet man.

You have seen paradise
And you have seen ghosts
Of your past and present
That you silently bore
But every once in a while
When tides recede from the shore
And they tend to take you away
I want to firmly hold your hand
I want to be that quiet man.

You'd climb ladders
You'd move mountains
You'd steal the limelight
All by yourself.
But every once in a while
When you wish to disappear,
And hibernate
I want to be the blanket you wear
I want to be that quiet man.

When you finally reach the pinnacle
The summit, the vantage point
When the voyage you're borne for concludes,
I want to stand amongst the onlookers
And quietly revel the moment,
I want to be the common man
I want to be that quiet man.

I want to tell your tale to the world
Of your unfathomable beauty
Of your unquenchable desire
Of your unending pain
I want to pen them down, and show to the world,
That you're indeed a hurricane.
That colossal back, that strand of hair,
The mole on your cheek and the one beneath your chin,
I want to kiss you there
And everywhere else akin;
And take you home for this life.

They would know you, but not me
For they know the person and not the shadow,
I want to live within your shadows
I just want to be the quiet man.